International Labour Organization The Impact of Crisis-related - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The Impact of Crisis-related Changes in Trade Flows on Employment, Incomes, Regional and Sectoral Development in Brazil

International Labour Organization

in Brazil

Scott McDonald, Marion Jansen, Erik von Uexkull GTAP Conference June, 2010

Ralf Peters ILO Trade and Employment Programme Comments to jansen@ilo.org

Summary and Overview

• Financial crisis spread quickly to other countries
• Trade was a major channel: Trade dropped by 40 per cent
• The study examines the impact of the trade shock on labour

and household incomes in a developing country: Brazil

• Use a CGE model where exports are exogenous and
• Use a CGE model where exports are exogenous and

reduce exports

• Modest GDP reduction by 2.1 per cent
• Labour lose out of the crisis, with low and medium skilled

labour losing more than high skilled labour

A single country CGE: STAGE_LAB

• STAGE is a general purpose single country CGE model

calibrated using data from a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM determines agents and provides database)

• STAGE_LAB is a variant of STAGE with greater richness in

the modelling of factor use

• Developed by Scott McDonald and Karen Thierfelder
• Developed by Scott McDonald and Karen Thierfelder
• Conceptually follows: Derivis, de Melo, Robinson (1982),

Robinson, Kilkenny, Hanson (1990), Kilkenny (1991).

• Well documented model
• Codes for the STAGE models are provided free of charge

for academic use: http://www.cgemod.org.uk/

Features of STAGE_LAB

• General treatment of trade: goods to be traded or non-

traded

• Allows relaxation of the small country assumption for

exports

• Price taker for all imports
• Imperfect transformation between domestic demand and

export demand: Constant Elasticity of Transformation

• Household consumption expenditure is modelled using

Stone-Geary utility functions

• Armington assumption: domestic and imported goods

consumed depending on relative price

• All tax rates can adjust endogenously to satisfy fiscal policy

constraints

Production Relationships for Stage_LAB Model: Quantities

• Value added production technologies specified as general system of nested

CES functions

Production in STAGE_LAB

• Activity output is a CES aggregate of the quantities of aggregate

intermediate inputs (QINT) and value added (QVA)

• Aggregate intermediate inputs are a Leontief aggregate of the

(individual) intermediate inputs

• Aggregate value added is a CES aggregate of the quantities of

‘primary’ inputs demanded by each activity (FD), where the primary inputs can be natural factors – types of labour, capital and land that inputs can be natural factors – types of labour, capital and land that exist – and aggregate factors that are aggregates of natural factors and/or other aggregate factors

• No assumption necessary that all natural factors are equally

substitutable

• Factor markets are segmented, e.g. unskilled labour in different regions

Unemployment in the Model

• Allows endogenous unemployment for all factors and

ability for factors to migrate between regions and/or factor classification

• Unemployment:
• supply = current total demand + stock of factor currently
• supply = current total demand + stock of factor currently

unemployed

• Real wage is fixed until all the stock absorbed by the labour

market and after that the real wage is flexible

• Migration:
• constant elasticity of supply of subsets of factors to ‘pools’
• allows factors to migrate between regions

Data and Closure

• Data: SAM constructed by Bento de Souza Ferreira Filho
• Base year is 2004
• 27 regions aggregated to 7 regions
• 42 commodities
• 7 region specific types of land
• 7 region specific types of land
• 7 region specific types of capital
• 35 types of labour (5 different skill levels in each region)
• 7 region specific households
• A short-term perspective: Capital and land are fixed
• Skilled labour is assumed to adjust via wages, while the model allows for

unemployment of unskilled labour (reflecting the realities of the Brazilian labour market)

8

Exogenous trade shock

• Export quantities are made exogenous, world prices of exports flexible
• Mirror data to calculate decline of exports to US and EU
• Percentage change of Feb. - April of 2009 to same period in 2008
• Trade with rest of the world assumed unchanged
• Import quantity is endogenous and world prices of imports are fixed
• Imports decline as well
• Imports decline as well
• 2nd scenario: fixed import quantity (based on calculated changes) and

flexible prices for imports

... is predicted to lead ...

Sugar Cane 0.0% Soybean 12.8% Other agriculture

• 14.2%

Livestock

• 4.3%

Mineral Extraction

• 18.3%

Petrol and Gas Extraction 21.9% Non metallic minerals

• 19.1%

Iron

• 30.5%

Non ferrous metals

• 26.9%

Other metal products

• 13.1%

Machinery

• 16.5%

Electric materials

• 6.9%

Electronic Equipment

• 6.9%

Automobiles

• 2.5%

Other vehicles and spare parts

• 17.8%

Wood and furniture

• 20.6%

Brazil: Export shock as used for the modelling exercise

Paper and graphic 5.9% Rubber products

• 8.6%

Chemical elements

• 5.0%

Refined petrol products

• 2.4%

Other chemical products 1.1% Pharmaceuticals 15.7% Plastics

• 2.0%

Textiles

• 12.0%

Apparel

• 17.2%

Leather products

• 13.1%

Processed coffee products

• 21.0%

Livestock products

• 2.4%

Sugar

• 1.3%

Other food products

• 1.1%

Other manufacturing

• 6.7%

TOTAL

• 9.4%

... to substantial macroeconomic fluctuations...

Brazil: Predicted Changes in Macroeconomic Aggregates

0.00

• 40.00
• 30.00
• 20.00
• 10.00

0.00

... and welfare reductions, especially in the more industrialized regions.

Brazil: Predicted Welfare Changes

All factors are predicted to lose, but very low wage earners are hit the hardest.

Brazil: Predicted Changes in Factor Incomes

North NE C West South Sao P Rio SE V low wages

• 11.15
• 7.27
• 1.60
• 6.00 -7.43
• 7.71
• 8.80

Low wages

• 9.24
• 6.78
• 2.13
• 5.64 -6.48
• 6.80
• 7.99

Med wages

• 7.37
• 6.09
• 2.06
• 5.94 -5.68
• 5.96
• 6.71

High wages

• 2.85
• 2.48
• 0.95
• 2.44 -2.56
• 2.44
• 2.86

V high wages

• 2.83
• 2.19
• 1.08
• 2.36 -2.77
• 1.41
• 2.94

Capital

• 4.64
• 3.73
• 5.26
• 4.75 -5.10
• 2.39
• 5.16

Land

• 9.51
• 5.48

6.37

• 1.01 -3.37
• 8.69
• 6.97

Unemployment increases, especially for very low wage earners in the South...

Brazil: Predicted Changes in Unemployment

2.50 3.00 3.50 4.00 4.50 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00

... and there are migration incentives for skilled labour to Rio and the Central West.

Brazil: % Changes in Employment due to Labour Migration

Conclusions / Lessons from Brazil

• Exports and imports decline which worsens allocative efficiency:

Welfare declines

• Strong differences in the impact of the crisis among households,

regions, production factors

• Results demonstrate the seriousness of the trade shock for the Brazilian
• Results demonstrate the seriousness of the trade shock for the Brazilian

economy despite it being relatively close

• Policy intervention seems to have been effective in mitigating some of

the impact to materialize. Focus on social spending (Bolsa Familia extension) seems justified given the strong effect on low wage earners.

• Limitation: Effects may be inflated because in reality actors may believe

that exports normalize